TOI Staff
Times of Israel, Aug. 17, 2023
“Russia has a credible way of building over the next year or so a capability to go from periodically launching tens of imported Shahed-136 kamikaze drones against Ukrainian targets to more regularly attacking with hundreds of them.”
Russian officials visiting Iran as part of cooperation on attack drone development earlier this year were forced to hunker down in their hotel after an alleged strike by Israel’s Mossad spy agency on a drone manufacturing facility in Tehran, according to a report Thursday.
The Washington Post report, citing documents leaked to it from the program, said the group of visiting managers and engineers were forced to remain in their lodgings after a strike on a reported Shahed-136 production facility in Isfahan, widely attributed to Mossad. Iranian officials were concerned further strikes could next be launched on additional drone facilities in Tehran which the Russians were about to tour, it said.
In the January attack, an Iranian Defense Ministry statement described three drones being launched at the facility, with two of them successfully shot down. A third apparently made it through to strike the building, causing “minor damage” to its roof and wounding no one, the ministry said. London-based opposition Iranian news outlet Iran International cited eyewitnesses as saying that they saw three or four explosions.
The Washington Post report, based on the trove of classified documents, revealed steady Russian progress toward manufacturing its own improved version of the advanced Iranian attack drone for use against Ukraine.
The post said the documents were obtained from a person involved in the work at a special Russian facility aimed at producing 6,000 drones by the summer of 2025, but who opposes the project and believes it has “gone too far.”
“This was the only thing I could do to at least stop and maybe create some obstacles to the implementation of this project,” the unnamed individual was quoted as saying, expressing hope that additional Western sanctions will be subsequently introduced, hindering the joint Russian-Iranian project.
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